Tag: creativity

Liam Byrne on how innovators from around the world can teach the UK valuable lessons | Society | The Guardian – The UK government wants to offer up performance data so we have an "open book government". This from Liam Byrne: "online performance information is used to allow people to hold services to account and contribute to the way they develop. Take the US federal government website, Data.gov, which offers a wide range of information, from spending by different government agencies to levels of pollution. People can download and analyse the data themselves."

Such open-book government is generating pressure for both better services and greater value for money. US cities, such as New York, Washington and Baltimore, which have been pioneering these approaches, have demonstrated improvements in policing and healthcare, as well as saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

CDI Europe Doers VII: We Share Stuff, Podnosh and Talk About Local – Iris lapinski cam to Birmingham from and organisation called CDI Europe and talked to some (not all) of the cities "doers". It's good to get a perspective from outside the city. CDO Europe sprang from South America and as srtong aims: "Our mission is to transform lives and strengthen low-income communities by empowering people with information and communication technology. We use technology as a medium to fight poverty, stimulate entrepreneurship and create a new generation of changemakers."
Thanks for coming Iris, come back soon!

Curating conversations | The Guardian Open Platform | guardian.co.uk – "Twitter is becoming an ever present backchannel at conferences and events. However sometimes it needs curating and moderating, especially if it's to be displayed large as a part of the event. Here we talk about an app built in a few hours and open sourced today which we used for this purpose for The Guardian's Activate Summit"

Technology Strategy Board | Creative Industries Strategy 09 – "Our three-year strategy for 2008-2011 is to drive innovation by connecting and catalysing. To achieve this we are focusing on three themes: challengeled innovation, technology-inspired innovation and the innovation climate. For more information on the overall strategy see www.innovateuk.org."

Job listing for Innovation and New Markets Executive, Screen West Midlands, Birmingham – Audiences Central – Your job will be to assist in delivering a programme of support for digital projects and companies in the region including events, project development and production funding and identifying new trends in digital media, technology and emerging business models. Experience in the digital media sector is highly desirable, as is successful partnership work, project management and familiarity with media contracts – particularly in the digital sector.

The mystery of the missing London parking tickets | News | guardian.co.uk – This fab use of data to reveal curious patterns shows how citizens and news outlets can work together to ask interesting questions: ”
Nobody has parked in a loading bays illegally for 18 months, and nobody has overstayed in a parking place across the whole of London? That’s a flipping miracle. You’d think TfL would be shouting the new-found behaviour of London drivers from the rooftops.” Except … apart from a couple of low totals at the end of 2008 (which may be due to delays in tickets issued working their way through the system), total ticket numbers have generally risen; indeed they hit an all-time high in November 2007. Clearly, people aren’t really behaving better.

cybersoc.com: revealed: groundbreaking study of user generated content use at the bbc – The majority of respondents to the MORI poll commissioned had favourable views of user generated content and thought it played a positive roll in reporting yet few have actually contributed. One of the questions was whether people would take a photo if they saw a fire break out – just 14% said they would, and just 6% of those said they’d send it to a news organisation. Great differences were seen across classes – 16% of higher management would take a photo, with all saying they’d submit it to a news organisation, but in other groups (middle-management to manual laborers) only between 4 – 5% would take a photo.

Job listing for Aspiring programme makers – Audiences Central – Our initial aim was to provide the area with its first local television channel and provide an outlet for video productions made with the various groups we work with. Now with the help of Aston Villa Community Interest Company and Data Pacific we have created V-Cube.tv. We intend to produce and schedule programmes that directly or indirectly support, enhance, promote or deliver local concerns & initiatives directly to the Web and other broadcast platforms.

Digital Mentors FAQs — Media Trust – “Is this about getting people online? No. If more people get online as a result of Digital Mentors, that’s great. But digital media is as much about offline technology. But digital media is as much about offline technology, as long as it helps communities to express and exchange their views.”

The fundamental media bias | The Democratic Society – " “narrative bias” – the fact that newspapers favour reportage that create narratives over stories that are factual. The strong narrative line is that we’re in a uniformly disastrous situation, and the PM, or Obama, or whoever, can personally shift the global economy for good or ill. The weak narrative line – as ever – is that it’s very complicated and hard to read the signs "

The power of serendipitous findability and the end of bullshit – "Why am I more optimistic now than at any time in my life? Because I think we’ve never had such good small-group making tools or such good information-connecting tools. We’re developing a global social nervous system. As a result, I think bull-shit is in trouble.
And it’s all because of serendipitous findability—the odds that you will fortuitously connect with someone you don’t know but share an interest with, or the odds that you will learn something timely or surprising or valuable to you."

Matt Lock Commissioning for Attention Part 1 – Read Me! « TEST – "‘commissioning for attention’, a phrase I’ve been using for a while to describe what I do at Channel 4 Education. I hate phrases like ‘360 content’ or ‘multiplatform’, as these encourage people to get hung up on technology or to have a box-ticking mentality to where ideas can exist, rather than really focusing on users and understanding what they’re doing."

Wirearchy · Hierarchy is a Prosthesis for Trust … – Just to quite: :We are increasingly using attraction and negotiation to arrive at what needs doing, by whom, for when and with what. Many (but certainly not all) areas of economic and societal activity still operate with traditional hierarchy, and more and more often the trust it offered or symbolised is being betrayed in order to serve the interests of those who hold the power. History suggests that 1) it has ever been thus, but / and that 2) when practiced to excess, dire consequences eventuate."

"2. Create from relevance. Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them, and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or, better yet, work to address them!) instead of relying on explanation alone.
3. Stop calling them “soft” skills. Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a 21st-century global economy facing complex challenges.""